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Google’s antitrust gut punch and the Trump wild card

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This story originally appeared in The Debrief with Mat Honan, your weekly take on the tech news that really matters. Sign up here to get the next one in your inbox.

Last week, the US Department of Justice released its recommendations for proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google. While no one thought the DOJ would go easy on Google, the remedies it did suggest are profound and, if enacted, could be catastrophic to its business.

First, some background. The case was first filed back in 2020. Then in August, Judge Amit Mehta ruled in favor of DOJ (and against Google), finding that Google ran its business as an illegal monopoly. Now, the DOJ has made its case for what it thinks Google should have to do in the wake of that verdict. Next, Google will propose its own set of remedies to the court. Finally, Judge Mehta will have to decide which, if any, of these remedies to enact.

So what is the DOJ proposing? Buckle up.

The government starts by calling for an end to “third party payments.” This means Google would have to stop paying the likes of Apple and Mozilla to make Google search the default engine in those companies’ browsers and devices. This is not surprising. These agreements were at the heart of the matter that led to the ruling in August.

Google would also be required to “disclose data sufficient to level the scale-based playing field it has illegally slanted”—including syndicating search results to its competitors. This basically means it would have to share its treasure trove of search data to the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and on down the line.

The DOJ also argues Google should be forced to divest “control and ownership” of Chrome and Android. In the case of Android, Google’s mobile operating system that most of the phones in the world run on, Google would either have to sell it, or no longer require manufacturers, like Samsung or LG, to use its services on their devices. And if it was the latter, any deal would be subject to oversight and could still potentially result in a forced sale of Android if the government found Google’s actions insufficient.

If the other remedies are body blows, this one is more like losing a limb. Selling off Chrome and/or Android would have massive, massive consequences all across Google’s lines of businesses. It’s also worth noting that before he was tapped to oversee all of Google (and then Alphabet), Sundar Pichai ran Chrome and then Android. These are his babies.

But wait, there’s more! Google would also be prohibited from investing in or buying outright “any search or search text ad rival, search distributor, or rival query-based AI product or ads technology.” That’s big because there are a lot of companies in the AI space trying to become the search engine of the future right now. (Though it was cleared, Google was already under scrutiny for such investments in the UK, which was investigating its $2 billion investment in Anthropic.) Google could even be prohibited from using any properties it already owns and operates from favoring its own search or ad products. This would force the company to present users with choices of which search engines to use in its own hardware devices, like the Google Pixel phone, as well as on services like YouTube.

There’s still more on the DOJ’s wish list. But you get this picture. It’s a heavy hammer.

So now what?

You can think of where we are a little bit like the stage of a criminal trial when a defendant has been found guilty and a prosecutor suggests a sentence. The judge still has the final word here (at least until an inevitable appeal) and could choose to enact more lenient penalties along the lines of what Google will likely propose, or take up the Justice Department’s set of proposals in whole or in part. (He could also just go his own way.) In short, now we know what the DOJ would like to see happen. And of course the whole thing couldwill go to appeal. So, what will actually happen remains to be seen.

What will Trump do?

A little bit of a wild card in all this is that by the time Judge Mehta gets around to a ruling (he has set a two week hearing for April with a ruling projected in August 2025) there will be an entirely new administration in office. In theory, the Trump administration could drop the case altogether or push for lighter remedies.

While we don’t yet know what it will do, it’s worth considering that Google does not have many friends in Trumpworld. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has said bluntly that “it’s time to break Google up.” Trump has long aired grievances about the company. And the suit began, remarkably, four years ago under the first Trump administration.

But, then again, in an interview last month, Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait asked Trump if Google-parent Alphabet should be broken up. After a series of complaints and digressions about how he appeared in its search results, Trump more or less equivocated. He called breaking up Google “a very dangerous thing” and noted that “China is afraid of Google.” And then: “Sometimes you have to fight through these threats. I’m not a fan of Google. They treat me badly, but are you going to destroy the company by doing that?” he said. “What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair.”

So maybe Trump will see Google as a bulwark against China. If there’s one thing he seems to like less than Google, it’s China? Or, well, who knows, it could come down to who Trump talked to last. As The Verge editor in chief Nilay Patel pointed out, some of Trump’s allies in tech are already strongly in the anti-Google camp: “The problem for Google is that Andreessen, Vance, Musk etc all sort of love this idea,” he skeeted on Bluesky. (Yeah, that’s what you call it. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.)

I would add Peter Thiel to that list as a very notable “etc.” Thiel has been extremely critical of Google, and has come down in particular on its relationship with China. He’s written an op-ed in the New York Timesabout it, and has gone so far as to call the company “seemingly treasonous.” So, there’s that.

What do I think?

I’m not a lawyer! This is not investment advice! Blah blah blah! But I’ve been covering Google for a long, long time. Nearly my entire career.

Do I think Google has grown too big and too powerful? Absolutely! No one company should have as much market dominance as it does. Not Google. Not Apple. Not Meta. Not Amazon. Not Microsoft. Which means it’s especially messed up that they all are that big. Big Tech reminds me of the famous political cartoon(s) of the great colonial powers carving up their own spheres of influence, except in this case we are all China.

Still, I’ll say something that may be a little contrarian here: I think Google’s control over Chrome and Android are more or less beneficial for consumers, or at least help provide a good experience. The data collection practices are horrendous and potentially dangerous. And yes, product “ecosystems” are most often swamps that are meant to make it hard to get out of any given system.

But the way Google has made so many of its products—Chrome, Gmail, Search, Maps, Gemini, Android, Photos, etc.—highly interoperable is kinda nice when you look at it from a purely user-centric perspective. It means you can share your data and log in and history and, to some extent, personality across lots of different products in ways that make life at least a tiny bit more convenient. This may seem trivial, but when you get an email confirming a doctor’s appointment, which Google then automatically adds to your calendar, alerts you with a notification on your phone that it’s time to depart in order to arrive on time, and then helps you navigate to the new office, it’s pretty helpful.

That said, I think any remedies should target the agreements Google has with other companies to keep its engine as the default. For the first time in decades, we’re starting to see real search alternatives emerge and they should not be stifled by secret multi-billion dollar agreements among the great powers. I also think a good ruling would limit Google’s ability to prioritize its own products and services in search results—for example, when I search for “a good Thai restaurant near me,” Google displays the actual results with a list of restaurants from its database with its user reviews, plotted out on its own Maps product, and this is all above a link to Yelp that might actually have better review data and the same mapping.

Maybe you disagree! Well, there is still plenty of time to argue with me and tell me I’m wrong. The only thing that’s certain at this point is that this case is going to drag on for a long time.

Programming note: The Debrief will be off next week. See you in December.

If someone forwarded you this edition of The Debrief, you can subscribe here. I appreciate your feedback on this newsletter. Drop me a line at mat.honan@technologyreview.com with any and all thoughts. And of course, I love tips.

Now read the rest of The Debrief

The News

Elon Musk joined Trump’s call with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

• Open AI gives us a view of how it safety tests its large language models.

• Several of the big crypto companies are campaigning for seats on Trump’s new crypto council.

• Threads begins rolling out Bluesky-esque updates as that network starts to surge.

• Incredible graph of the output of global climate emissions by nations over time.

• A look at the legal and ethical issues surrounding uterus transplants.

• Turns out a two-hour interview will enable AI to create a pretty accurate replica of your personality.

The Chat

Every week I’ll talk to one of MIT Technology Review’s reporters or editors to find out more about what they’ve been working on. This week, I talked to Eileen Guo, our senior reporter for features and investigations.

Mat: Hey Eileen, I loved your story on Clear. It’s such a strange company. What does it do exactly?

Eileen: Thanks! That it’s so ubiquitous but also under the radar is why I wanted to write about it. Clear is a biometric identity company. Initially, it allowed members to go through airport security a little bit faster—by submitting to background checks and then, once at the airport, verify their identities with their biometrics. But for the past few years, it’s been aggressively expanding outside of airports.

Mat: How did this private company get to take responsibility for identity verification at airports?

Eileen: Clear started in the aftermath of 9/11, when airport security was a mess and everyone—Congress, the newly created TSA, travelers—was looking for a solution to speed up the process without (theoretically) sacrificing security. Verified Identity Pass, as the company was then known, was one of a few companies that stepped up and it was the most successful by far. I think that was because it was really good at public-private partnerships. It really grew by renting space from the airports where it operated; for every person that signed up, the airports would also receive a portion of revenue.

Mat: You’ve written about biometrics several times now. Are we on an inevitable journey to using our faces and fingers as identifiers? Like, at some point if I want a Big Mac, am I going to have to scan my eyeballs into the drive thru camera?

Eileen: I think the companies selling the technology want it to feel inevitable, and more companies are certainly trying to push pay by palm or iris or face, so we’ll see more of it, but we’re also seeing other ways of proving our digital identities. Biometrics is one solution (with a lot of problems). But it’s not the only one.

Mat: Anything surprise you when you reported this out?

Eileen: I guess I hadn’t understood how much the biometrics and identity space is really commoditized. One of our early questions was, what is Clear’s technology? But Clear doesn’t write the facial verification or other algorithms that it uses; it chooses the best ones, and then its real differentiator is packaging it all together in a platform that is easy to use—both for its business customers (like LinkedIn or Home Depot) and us, its human customers.

The Recommendation

As a sad old GenXer, nothing makes me feel sadder or older than seeing bands I loved as a kid, bands that sometimes felt dangerous or revolutionary or deeply weird, shuffling around on stage in orthopedic shoes selling nostalgia to graying, pot-bellied old people wearing the same Ben Davies pants they bought at the community thrift in 1994. Don’t get me wrong! I was swooning with all the other aging hipsters on statins at the Magnetic Fields and Bikini Kill and Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day shows this year. And I fully intend to see Kim Deal come tour next year, especially because it will give me a chance to once again talk about how I saw her open for Nirvana.

But all these things just remind me that I’m gonna die. Which is why I have been extremely behind the times in listening to The Cure’s new album, Songs of a Lost World. But as everybody has been saying, it is easily one of their best albums, period, and one of the best albums of the year as well. Maybe it helps that their music has always been the kind of stuff that reminds me I’m gonna die, but in a good way! Anyway. If you have not already, go give it a listen. “Endsong” in particular is really beautiful. (And, uh, maybe about getting old and dying.)

How Trump’s tariffs could drive up the cost of batteries, EVs, and more

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President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” plan to enact huge tariffs on imported goods threatens to jack up the cost and slow down the development of US cleantech projects.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to enact 10% to 20% across-the-board tariffs on all overseas products, 60% to 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, and 25% to 100% tariffs on products from Mexico—the last in part to prevent the flow of goods from Chinese companies setting up manufacturing plants there and in part to force Mexico to halt migration into the US.

These plans could easily add billions of dollars to the prices that US companies—and therefore consumers—pay for batteries and electric vehicles, as well as the steel used to build solar farms, geothermal plants, nuclear facilities, transmission lines, and much more.

“This is going to raise the cost of clean energy and that will slow down the revolution,” says David Victor, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Diego, in reference to the otherwise accelerating development of low-emissions industries.

Trump’s campaign rhetoric certainly hasn’t always translated into enacted policies. But he has consistently asserted that tariffs will force companies to produce more goods on American soil, restoring US manufacturing, creating jobs, and easing the federal deficit—while inflicting economic pain on international economic rivals like China.

“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’’ Trump proclaimed at a rally in Flint, Michigan, in September.

But despite what Trump says or understands about tariffs, they are effectively a domestic tax paid by the US businesses purchasing those goods and passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices. (Plenty of Republicans agree.) Many economists and international affairs experts argue that such trade restrictions should be applied judiciously, if at all, because they can boost inflation, trigger retaliatory trade policies, chill investment, and stall broader economic growth.

The precise impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs on any given sector will depend on how high the incoming administration ultimately sets those fees, how they compare to existing tariffs, where else the goods in question can be purchased, how companies and nations respond over time, and what other policies the administration enacts.

But here are three areas where the costs of materials and products that are crucial to the energy transition could rise under the plans that Trump sketched out on the campaign trail.

Batteries

China is one of the world’s largest producers of EVs, batteries, solar cells, and steel, but in part due to previous trade restrictions, the US doesn’t rely heavily on the nation for most of these products (at least not directly).

“But there’s one exception to that, and it’s batteries,” says Antoine Vagneur-Jones, head of trade and supply chains at BloombergNEF, a market research firm.

China absolutely dominates the battery sector. According to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency, the country produces around 85% of the world’s battery anodes, 70% of its cathodes, and 75% of its battery cells. In addition, more than half of the global processing of lithium, cobalt, and graphite, key minerals used to produce lithium-ion batteries, occurs in China.

The US imported some $4 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from China in the first four months of this year, according to BloombergNEF.

A Stihl employee assembling rechargeable batteries for tools.

The US already has a variety of tariffs on Chinese goods in place. President Biden preserved many of the ones that Trump enacted during his first term, and he even increased a number of them earlier this year. The White House said the action was taken in response to what it described as China’s “unfair trade practices.” But it was just the latest action in a long-running, bipartisan quest to counter China’s growing economic strength and grip on key components of the high-tech and cleantech sectors.

Still, Trump’s proposed 60% to 100% tariffs would far exceed the ones currently set on batteries, which stand at 28.4% for EV batteries. On a $4 billion purchase, those border fees would add up to $2.4 billion at the low end, more than double the added cost under the current tariff rate, or (perhaps obviously) $4 billion at the high end, all else being equal.

Vagneur-Jones notes that even with a 60% tariff, Chinese batteries are so inexpensive that they would remain cost competitive with US-produced ones. But this would still represent a big jump over current costs for companies that need to buy batteries for EVs, home solar systems, or grid storage plants. And because China is such a dominant producer, US businesses would have limited paths for purchasing those batteries from other sources at similar volumes.

Steel

Steel is used in just about every single cleantech or climate-tech project today. Strong and durable, it forms vital parts of wind turbines, hydropower plants, and solar farms. All that steel has to come from somewhere, and for the most part, it’s not the US.

Last year, the US imported 3.8 million tons of “steel mill products” valued at $4.2 billion from Mexico, according to data from the International Trade Administration’s Global Steel Trade Monitor.

Steel imported to the US from Mexico, the nation’s second-largest supplier of the metal alloy, generally isn’t subject to significant tariffs, so long as it was originally melted and poured in Mexico, Canada, or the United States. So a 25% to 100% tariff on the same value of steel would cost US companies an extra $1.1 billion to $4.2 billion (all else being equal and without accounting for fees on certain steel products.)

(Earlier this year, the Biden administration did impose a 25% tariff on imports of steel from Mexico that were originally melted and poured in other nations, as part of an effort to prevent major suppliers like China from sidestepping tariffs. But those taxes apply only to a small fraction of shipments.)

Rolls of galvanized steel sheet inside the factory or warehouse. — Rolls of galvanized steel.

Meanwhile, Trump’s 10% to 20% tariff on all nations could add up to that same amount to the cost of steel from other suppliers around the world, depending on how those compare to each nation’s existing tariffs. That may, for example, lump up to $1.6 billion onto the nearly $8 billion worth of steel the US imported last year from Canada, the nation’s largest source (all else being equal and without accounting for fees on certain steel products.)

Those fees would boost the costs for any US company that uses steel that isn’t supplied by domestic producers, including cleantech businesses building demo projects or commercial-scale facilities.

Plenty of projects will be spared, though. Those that are receiving various federal loans, grants, or tax incentives are generally already required to source their steel from the US, in which case they wouldn’t be affected by such tariffs, explained Derrick Flakoll, a North America policy associate at BloombergNEF, in an email.

But competition to secure limited supplies of domestic steel is likely to get more intense. The US dominated global steel production during much of the last century, but it’s now ranked a distant fourth, generating about one-twelfth as much as China last year, according to the World Steel Association.

“We went down the path of globalization,” says Joshua Posamentier, co-founder and managing partner of Congruent Ventures, a climate-focused venture firm in San Francisco. “We are now utterly dependent on all the other parts of the world.”

Electric vehicles

The US is the world’s largest importer of EVs, purchasing nearly $44 billion dollars worth of battery, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid cars and trucks last year, according to the World Trade Organization. It’s the biggest export market for Germany and South Korea, according to BloombergNEF.

If Trump enacted a 10% to 20% tariff on all foreign goods, it would add between $4.4 and $8.8 billion in costs on the same volume of EV purchases (all else being equal and without adjusting for nation-by-nation fees already in place).

His still higher proposed tariffs on Mexico would add substantially bigger premiums on vehicles built in the country, which exported more than 100,000 EVs produced by auto giants including Ford and Chevrolet last year, according to the Mexican Automotive Industry Association. Meanwhile, BMW, Tesla and Chinese companies BYD and Jetour have all announced plans to produce EVs in Mexico.

A Porsche employee at the assembly line — A Porsche employee checks the paint on the body of an all-electric Porsche Macan, at the automaker’s plant in Leipzig, Germany.

While China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs, Trump’s hopes of levying a 60% to 100% tariff on the nation’s goods probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on that sector. That’s because the nation already imports very few Chinese EVs. Plus, President Biden himself recently ratcheted up the tariff rate to 100%.

The broader impacts on EVs will likely be further complicated by the incoming Trump administration’s reported plans to roll back federal rules and subsidies supporting the sector, including parts of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Repealing key provisions of Biden’s signature climate law would work against the goal of countering China’s dominance, as those federal incentives have already triggered a development boom for US-based battery and EV projects, says Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association.

“It would undercut a lot of investment into manufacturing across the United States,” he says.

The ‘big concern’

Applied sensibly, tariffs can help certain domestic industries, by enabling companies to compete with the lower costs of overseas producers, catch up with manufacturing innovations or product improvements, and counter unfair trade practices.

Some US cleantech companies and trade groups, including solar manufacturers like First Solar and Swift Solar, have argued in favor of stricter trade restrictions.

Earlier this year, those and other companies represented by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee petitioned the federal government to investigate “potentially illegal trade practices” in Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. They alleged that China and Chinese-based companies have circumvented trade restrictions by shipping goods through distribution hubs in those countries and dumped goods priced below production costs in the US to seize market share.

Neither the companies nor the trade association responded to inquiries from MIT Technology Review concerning their view of Trump’s proposals before press time. Nor did the American Clean Power Association, which represents developers of solar farms and has opposed recent duty increases, which can drive up the costs of such projects.

Over time, Trump’s tariffs may indeed compel companies to bring more of their manufacturing operations back to the US and help diversify the global supply chain for crucial goods, UC San Diego’s Victor says.

The tariffs are likely to fuel more mining and processing of critical minerals like lithium and nickel in the US, too, given both the increased costs on imported materials and the administration’s plans to roll back environmental and permitting rules.

“They love extractive sectors,” says Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

But the “big concern” is that Trump’s plans to boost tariffs, cut government spending, and enact other policy changes could stall the broader economy, says Rachel Slaybaugh, a partner at DCVC, a San Francisco venture firm.

Indeed, the combined effects of Trump’s proposals, including his pledge to deport hundreds of thousands to millions of workers, may drive up US inflation more than 4% by 2026 while cutting gross domestic product by at least 1.3%, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research firm in Washington, DC.

The tariffs alone could cost typical households an extra $2,600 per year. They may also trigger retaliatory measures by other nations, including China, which could impose their own steeper fees on US products or cut off the flow of crucial goods.

Slaybaugh expects to see a continued slowdown in venture investments into cleantech companies in the coming months, as investors wait to see how aggressively the Trump administration implements the various pledges he made on the campaign trail. That pause alone will make it harder for startups to secure the capital they need to scale up or sustain operations.

Even if the tariffs do eventually push US businesses to produce more of the goods currently being delivered cheaply and efficiently from elsewhere, it leaves a big problem when it comes to the clean energy transition: Given the higher expenses of US labor, land, and materials, it will simply cost far, far more to build the modern, low-emissions energy and transportation systems the nation now needs, Nahm says.

At this point, after China has spent decades and vast sums locking down global supply chains, scaling up production, and driving down manufacturing costs, it’s foolhardy to believe that US businesses can easily step in and crank out these essential goods in relative global isolation, as Victor and his colleague, Michael Davidson, argued in a recent Brookings essay.

“Collaboration and competition, not hostility, are how we can catch up to the world’s largest supplier of clean technology products,” they wrote.